ESPN draft experts: 2014 QB class is deep, but no Luck or RGIII among them

Blog Post by: Michael Rand

October 28, 2013 - 2:29 PM

It's a 1-6 start to the Vikings season, so naturally fans are starting to look toward the 2014 draft. The Vikings will almost certainly be looking to choose a QB in what many are calling one of the deepest drafts for a QB in NFL history.

That said, there are a couple voices of caution when it comes to expectations from that class: ESPN draft gurus Todd McShay and Mel Kiper Jr. both say that while this class is deep and has some high-level talent at the top, there is no clear-cut Andrew Luck or RGIII type -- at least not yet.

There's no Andrew Luck in the 2014 draft class, and while I think that Oregon's Marcus Mariota has an extraordinarily high ceiling (and he has been more durable to this point in his career), I would argue that Robert Griffin III was playing at a higher level at this point in his senior season than Mariota is playing right now as a redshirt sophomore. The biggest difference is that RG III was making a lot more deep vertical throws than Mariota is asked to attempt in the Ducks offense, and Griffin's improvement with his touch and ball placement on downfield throws during his final season at Baylor was remarkable.

If we were to merge the 2012 class with the 2014 class (note that the grades on the 2014 guys are far from final) and stack them up based on the ratings (out of 100) I gave them, this is how the top five would look:

You mentioned the Luck class, but I was around for the 1983 draft as well (I was 23, but I was around), and that class had John Elway at the top, and guys named Jim Kelly and Dan Marino who came later. Hindsight makes it all look better, but you knew you had at least one really good one with Elway. And what happened to Ryan Leaf doesn't take away from the fact that Peyton Manning was there in 1998. Again, the kind of guy you draft and know you're ready to hand him the keys. We might get three to four really good starters out of this class, and the landscape will change a lot between now and next spring, but right now there isn't that dead-set lock as a likely No. 1. It's a deep class -- there could be 14 or 15 players taken who are pretty darn good QBs -- but it still needs that lock.